I'm surprised that I haven't see this mentioned yet (and sincerely apologize if it has been addressed). In any event, it would seem that there should be some sort of vetting process available (if the ward wants it). That would allow a broad swath of members to write and submit. However, the post wouldn't go live until it was approved by whomever the Bishopric designates.

I could easily envision someone who is normally very reliable wading off into no man's land with a blog post. Really, it's no different than the occasional Sacrament Meeting talk. Except in this case we have "bleep button" capability by having someone review the writing before it's live. It would be nice to head off a problem at the pass before the post goes live.

Without this I'm willing to bet that something inappropriate will sneak through. One bad post and I could see the Ward/Stake shutting the whole thing down.

It wouldn't need to be overly sophisticated. Current writers would have the ability to create the content and submit the article as a draft. An email gets fired off to the designated publisher. Designated publishers would then be able to go in and hit the "Approve" button.

I understand what your concern is. Keep in mind however that not everyone needs be a publisher. By controlling who, or better yet what callings are publishers the issue of improper articles is limited.

I am assuming you envision every member being a submitter. That is difficult to do with the current set up. Essentially everyone in the ward would have to be added as a publisher. Managing this would become a nightmare as members come and go in the unit.

Personally I would like to see the ability for any member of a unit to be able to submit an article. Using the current category method of article posting the member could submit the article to a category and the category have primary publishers. A primary publisher would be the same as the current publisher except they have the additional capability of accepting, editing, and then publishing/approving the article on behalf of the member. For a member to publish an article now they must use some method outside the Newsletter application and submit it to a publisher. Finding out who the publishers are for a member without publisher or admin rights is difficult.

Not assuming that everyone would be a writer. We would still use the roles set-up for to determine authors. However, above and beyond that you would have an admin (or several) who are authorized to publish the articles. It would also give the publisher the ability to make any edits prior to publication.

My biggest concerns are around (1) information being shared before it should be (2) information being shared that is confidential (3) poor writing/spelling etc. All three scenarios can occur with virtually anyone (i.e. an EQ President or a counselor in the RS Presidency). I should have made clear that I'm not worried about someone ranting about the location of Kolob. It's much more about controlling the flow of information so that members receive appropriate and approved communication. I worry that speculation or rumor somehow end up on the blog.

This wouldn't be anything revolutionary. The Classic sites had a two step authentication (if I remember correctly). An item could be submitted by anyone but the admin(s) would need to approve the item before publication. Same exact concept here. You don't even have to make this mandatory. Give the admins the ability to turn on or off approval. For wards/stakes where this isn't an issue the experience would be like it is today. For those units that want a little more control turning on the approval does just that.

With the new version of the Newsletter, we did not want to follow the model that the Classic site was using for approvals. This process became a roadblock for many individuals when they were trying to post something and the individual with rights to publish took awhile to respond or approve. It was stated many times that this prevented many units from using the functionality on Classic.

With this version of Newsletter, we wanted to give individuals the ability to publish as long as they had been added as an approved publisher. After discussing this topic with many groups, it became evident that the units wanted to give control of the publishing to particular users and IF there was a problem they would remove the article immediately and revoke access for that particular individual.

Your feedback is the first we've heard that proposes going back to the old model as an option. We have logged your feedback, but it is currently not a priority.

The current path is a great idea. I wasn't a huge fan of the mandatory approval process as it did create a bottleneck (me - at the time). That's why I would advocate having it be an optional feature. In any event, I totally understand the decision and will look forward to seeing how smoothly this goes for the Church wide roll-out. I imagine that there will be a few hiccups but it should work well most of the time.

Our situation might be different from most units. We are extremely careful about controlling the message. I'm guessing that after a bad post (poor grammar, poor spelling, sharing not approved information, etc) or two that we will end up restricting the publishing to just a few members. Then, if members want something posted they would have to email it first to a publisher. Totally doable option.

Perhaps there should be four roles: admin, editor, publisher, and author. Administrators can grant access rights, editors can edit content both before and after it is published and publish author submissions, publishers can publish and edit their own articles, and authors can submit and edit drafts. Some units may not choose to use the author role, but others would. I could see author rights being especially useful to provide youth class leaders with a way to communicate while mitigating the risk of making them a publisher.

I think we can retain the two roles of admin and publisher and still incorporate a methodology within the application for the general membership to submit articles. I do not see the need for four roles as described. The role of author is what the general membership would have. There is no need to give that role a special title; merely giving members the ability to submit articles fills that role.

The role of editor can be adequately handled by the publisher and admin. Member submissions could be approved either by publisher or an admin but would be primarily a publisher responsibility. For those situations where a leader is not capable of being entrusted as a publisher then they simply are not given publisher rights.

I think the roles of the newsletter can be adjusted to extend the ability of the general membership to submit articles without them having to find out who within their ward is a publisher and then submit articles directly to them using e-mail or some other off-application method.

Each category could have a publisher designated to receive notices of new article submissions. Admins would designate this default publisher when setting up categories. Articles submitted by the general membership (those who are not admins or publishers) would be submitted under a category for approval. Any admin or publisher could approve the article but only the designated publisher would receive the new submission e-mail notice.

For the situation where multiple categories are listed for the article, a default category could be listed or the first category on the list used. The only purpose for a default category is for the e-mail notice of a new submission to be sent to a publisher.

These changes would incorporate features of the classic LUWS method of approval before publishing yet still extend publishing rights to ward leaders.